JOHN CARMAN on TELEVISION -- The Flu Bug That Killed 600,000

Then drop by "The American Experience" tonight (10 p.m. on Channel 9) to meet a flu bug that could snare a healthy young man in the morning and kill him by nightfall.

Think that figure skating is for 15-year-old Russian brats who like to fall down and ice their panties?

Then check out "Nova" tomorrow (8 p.m. on Channel 9) for a disease that turns your brain to sponge before it kills you.

The "American Experience" documentary is "Influenza 1918," about an epidemic that wiped out 600,000 Americans and millions worldwide before it suddenly vanished.

It has pretty much vanished from the national consciousness, too, although the so- called Spanish flu made October 1918 the deadliest month in U.S. history.

Producer Robert Kenner stacks the coffins so high in this film that he seems to sacrifice perspective. At one point, he has narrator Linda Hunt suggest that the nation was unraveling because of the flu. That's a tall claim to make with scant evidence.

Along those lines, his emphasis on fatal outcomes leaves it unclear what percentage of the population survived the flu.

More medical hindsight would have helped the film, too. Kenner makes much of the fact that the flu hit hardest at the most robust segments of the population, but never explains why.

Truth is, this "American Experience" documentary needs an infusion of "Nova." But "Nova" is preoccupied this week with another medical whammy.

Tomorrow's "Nova," a co-production with the BBC, is called "The Brain Eater," and say, didn't I see that movie back around 1956? Underground nuclear explosion unleashes giant ant that seizes its victims by the skull and sucks their brains out.

Guess that was a different movie. "Nova," and this really is serious, is about the possibility that mad cow disease may have crossed the species barrier to infect humans.

The fatal disease's long incubation period adds to the scariness of the prospect.

According to "Nova," it's at least possible -- that a human form of the disease, contracted from eating infected beef, could erupt on an immense scale. Britain apparently is most vulnerable.

And the culprit could be a highly infectious and virtually indestructible protein called a prion, capable of corrupting healthy proteins.

If luge coverage is sounding more and more attractive, you might take note that tomorrow's "Nova" is a decent primer for understanding the Oprah Winfrey defamation trial in Texas.

Actually, it's been called a "beef defamation" trial, a somewhat comical term. I've defamed a few cuts of beef in my life, too, but none has sued me. Anyway, the Oprah program in 1996 was about "dangerous food."

It got around to mad cow disease (or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, for the advanced among us) and the chance of havoc among humans.

"Nova" doesn't call the safety of American beef into serious question.

But it's an unsettling program, and viewers with fluttery stomachs ought to stay with the Olympics.